The Middle Ages: An unpleasant three centuries or complete fabrication?

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What makes a good conspiracy theory? Your mileage may vary, of course, but if you ask me, the best conspiracy theories are ones that are, frankly, bugnuts insane. The type of thing that is so wild and out there that it seems both impossible for anyone to believe it, but also extremely difficult to disprove. Something that, if it was true, would cause people to reconsider, well, practically everything. Move out of the way, flat-Earthers and lizard people believers, because this right here is the greatest conspiracy theory of all time.

The Middle Ages didn’t exist

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming your eyes have finished rolling back into your head and you’re ready to venture forward. Right? Well, before we can get into the specifics of this particular conspiracy theory, we actually need to talk a little bit about its foremost proponent and patient zero for this particular brand of lunacy: Heribert Illig.

Born in Bavaria in 1947, Illig was a big fan of the works of Immanuel Velikovsky, a controversial academic known for his extremely hot takes on ancient history, ones that reinterpreted past events by arguing for the occurrence of multiple catastrophic events, including near-contacts with other planets. He eventually joined an association primarily concerned with Velikovsky’s work and even edited their journal, Vorzeit-Frühzeit-Gegenwart, between the years of 1989 and 1994. In 1995, however, he struck out on his own, starting the journal Zeitensprünge.

With Zeitensprünge, Illig had an opportunity to pursue his own research and theories, which, given his fascination with Velikovsky, understandably contained a few hot takes of his own. If my three years of high school Deutsche holds up, Zeitensprünge roughly translates to “Time Jump,” which is an appropriate name for the magazine, since Illig’s early theories mostly consisted of revised and alternate chronologies of prehistory and Ancient Egypt.

While those theories garnered a fair amount of press coverage for Illig in his native Germany, they failed to gain any real traction with the scholarly community. Whether that is because his claims were baseless or simply suppressed as part of an ongoing academic conspiracy to discredit truth speakers…well, you can probably guess what we think.

But Illig wasn’t discouraged by the lack of credence given to his claims, and in fact, he was likely encouraged by the amount of press he received. So, in 1996 he doubled down on his revisionist histories and timelines, publishing Das erfundene Mittellalter, a title that translates to “The Invented Middle Ages” (Danke schön, Frau Chance!) and fleshes out Illig’s earlier, deliciously bonkers claim that the Middle Ages? They never actually happened.

At the heart of Illig’s theory is a conspiracy between the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Pope Sylvester II and maybe even Byzantine Emperor Consantine VII (gasp, not Constantine!). Illig claims that, in an effort to reconfigure things so that they could place themselves at the big, fancy, nice-looking year 1000, the trio rejiggered the calendar, fictionalized the whole of the Carolingian period – including Charlemagne – in the process. Basically, these three guys got together, decided the best way to hold onto power was through some symbolic date-based numerology, and then moved heaven and earth to make it happen.

It is, to say the least, a wild claim. But Illig maintains that there is evidence, or rather, a lack thereof, to back it all up. First up, let’s talk about archaeology. Illig states that there aren’t a whole lot of artifacts that can be reliably dated to the era in question and, furthermore, that studies like counting tree rings and radioactive dating are inherently inadequate. Of course, even if this was true (practically all scientists say it isn’t), it would still only indicate that a fictionalized Middle Ages was possible, not that it was definitely made up. And besides, if we can’t trust any dating methodology, then how exactly do we decide on any of this?

Another point that Illig brings up is the existence of Romanesque architecture in tenth century Western Europe. He suggests that this points to the fact that the era of Roman rule wasn’t as far back in the rear mirror as it may seem. The response to this one is fairly obvious though, since it’s 2016 and tacky people are still building houses with Roman looking columns flanking the front door. Doesn’t mean that the legions marched through last year.

Illig’s other big point is a math-based one, so bear with me for a minute.

The Julian Calendar was established by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. Trouble is, even with a leap day every four years, the Julian Calendar is a little bit off, gaining one day off the solar year every 128 years. That would mean that by 1582 CE, when the slightly tweaked Gregorian Calendar was introduced, there would need to be about 13 days accounted for. Trouble is, when the Gregorian Calendar was instituted, they only had a discrepancy of 10 days. And those missing three days? That works up to about 384 years…just about the length of time that Illig claims was falsely inserted into our timeline.

As damning as that evidence appears, however, it’s actually pretty easily disputed, as the 1582 CE calendar wasn’t meant to bring things in line with the Julian Calendar of 46 BC at all, but rather, to line up with the calendar of 325 CE, when the Council of Nicaea met and decided upon, among other things, the confusing-ass way that we decide Easter each year (tied to the Vernal Equinox, duh). The upshot? That Illig’s missing three hundred years are explained by the time between 46 BC and 325 CE.

Even outside of refuting Illig’s specific claims, there’s a ton of evidence that the Middle Ages did, in fact, exist. Some of the most incontrovertible of which is based on the cycle and pattern of solar eclipses. If three hundred years of our history were just made up, we’d expect to see some discrepancies in when and where these eclipses occurred. But instead, ancient reports of eclipses and other astronomical events like Halley’s Comet – both in Europe, as well as Asia – occur exactly where we would expect them.

But the biggest argument against Illig’s Phantom Time Hypothesis? It’s all of the other dominos that it would knock over if it was true. If Charlemagne was pure fiction, if the Carolingian dynasty didn’t exist, then the entire history of Western Europe – including all of the subsequent, resulting events that we know did actually happen – they’re all thrown into question. Furthermore, if the Middle Ages didn’t exist, then Muhammad and the initial spread of Islam couldn’t have occurred – at least not when we think it did – which opens up a whole other can of timeline worms (Read my upcoming comic: Timeline Worms!).

And on top of all of that? The idea that three European rulers could invent 300+ years of history out of whole cloth is a hilariously myopic example of Eurocentrism. Even if we’re willing to concede that it happened, how do we explain the fact that there were people living all over the rest of the world with their own histories. China specifically is a big fly in Illig’s ointment, as the Tang Dynasty had actual contact with the Islamic world during this period.

What do you think? Are we being too hard on Illig’s hypothesis? Is it possible that the Middle Ages never actually existed and that Medieval Times is even more inaccurate than you originally thought? Tell us below in the comments!